Director's Welcome

The national LRN team welcome your constructive comments and suggestions about practice learning information and the web site in particular.

Michael Leadbetter, Director, Practice Learning Taskforce

Spring 2005

Mike Leadbetter speaking at the Practice Learning Conference

The Practice Learning Taskforce (PLTF) has concluded its work. The PLTF was originally scheduled to complete its work in March 2005. Dr Stephen Ladyman, at that time the Minister for Adult Community Care Services, extended the life of the Taskforce by one year in view of the need to ensure that the practice learning requirements of the social work degree was given the requisite emphasis.

This website is a resource for everyone wishing to consolidate, innovate and improve practice learning.

Set out below is the introduction from the second annual report, which summarises the challenges and how we will seek to meet those challenges. At the same time we are endeavouring to make appropriate arrangements to ensure the Taskforce leaves behind it a legacy of partnership, innovative solutions and good practice guidance.

Einstein commented, "To continue doing the same things in the same way and expecting a different result is one definition of madness". Yet, speaking with 17 years experience as a Director of Social Services, there were occasional guilty moments when I heartily wished for a cessation of initiatives, more stability, a pause in the pace of change and simply the opportunity to catch one's breath and reflect at leisure.

Quite properly there are huge public expectations that the quality of public services will continually improve. Inevitably however there are real and unavoidable limitations in terms of capacity, time and the number of priorities that can be dealt with. Therefore we are dealing with two opposing constructs; a classic dichotomy. On the one hand the need to continually improve services, and on the other the significant limitations experienced by the Statutory, Voluntary and Private sectors and by the Higher Education Institutions.

In essence, the task for the Practice learning Taskforce (PLTF) was to take forward the necessary improvements required for Social Work students in their 200 days of Practice Learning: an integral component of the reform of Social Work education agenda. Implicit in the process was support and assistance for the key players, those with statutory responsibility for delivering the 200 days of Practice Learning. The aim was to secure underpinning benchmarked standards, which should ensure that cohorts of qualified Social Workers will embark on this fulfilling career properly equipped to meet the complex demands of practice in the 21st century.

The PLTF team (Project Manager, Change Agents, Administrators and myself) are all passionately committed to the place of Social Work in public services and its inherent importance as part of a modern welfare state. We believe that Social Work at its best improves and protects the lives of many vulnerable citizens. Social Workers provide comprehensive assessments and brokerage for services. Crucially, it is their task to intervene in a manner that recognises the individual as part of a family, the community and as a citizen: with the rights and responsibilities embodied in each individual's range of roles.

Social Workers, as well as assessing for services, need to be able to intervene therapeutically whilst at the same time taking account of socio- economic factors. Social Workers 'stand alongside' people through difficult periods of transition and pain, working with them to create alternative options. Those options are based on the fundamental belief that all the people with whom we work have value and potentially have a valuable contribution to make.

The same set of principles come into play in the work undertaken by the PLTF and our key partners, who on a daily basis face the dichotomy I have outlined above. The PLTF team sought to: -

  • Stand alongside with a very real understanding of the pressures.
  • Help create new ways of thinking about the challenge of increasing the quality, quantity and diversity of Practice Learning.
  • Provide hands on help, creative solutions and share best practice so setting in motion a legacy of ideas and initiatives.
  • Recognise the importance of the overall context. The Practice Learning experience is an important phase of lifelong learning and ideally will be embedded in 'learning organisations' with creative workforce planning arrangements.
  • At all times create positive and enduring partnerships. The challenges faced by the social care profession can only be delivered through cooperation and sharing, not through competition and isolation.

The targets for the PLTF were not particular to the team but shared by everyone involved in social work education and delivery. As already explained, the work of the PLTF was time limited. Meanwhile, when working towards change with the wide constituency of all involved in the social care field, the PLTF team aimed to mirror the competencies, principles and values of excellent social work practice.